I roll down the window, letting in the frigid air again. “We’re looking for Blue 11.”
“Other side of the stadium, buddy.”
I smile at Laurie. “I rest my case.”
We drive around to Blue 11, a trip which takes slightly longer than it took Lewis and Clark to go wherever the hell it was that Lewis and Clark went. That’s mainly because they didn’t have thousands of cars to contend with, or idiots throwing footballs and trying to pretend they didn’t lose their athletic ability during the Carter administration.
When we finally get there, we can’t find a place to park, since tailgate parties take up about five parking spaces for each party. We find a spot in Blue 6, right next to a line of more than twenty portable toilet sheds, each one with a line of at least ten beer-filled tailgaters waiting to use it.
We walk over to Blue 11. That doesn’t mean we’ve found our group; it merely means that we’re in the right neighborhood.
“Andy… Laurie… over here!”
I look over and see Pete Stanton standing in front of a van, its back door open. There are trays of food in the back of the van, adjacent to three small barbecues and two coolers, no doubt filled with soda and beer.
Surrounding all this sustenance are a dozen men and four women, all bundled in parkas and assorted “Giants” outdoor weather gear. Everybody looks frozen, which is no great surprise, since it’s twenty-two degrees and windy out here.
Pete is one of my best friends, a fact I currently regret, as that friendship is the reason I’m in the process of freezing my ass off. A while back I successfully defended the Giants starting running back, Kenny Schilling, when he was on trial for murder. Kenny has since been inviting me to stand on the sidelines during a game, an invitation that includes my bringing two guests.
I’ve been declining for years now, preferring the comfort of Charlie’s sports bar, but I recently made the mistake of mentioning the possibility to Pete. He went nuts, and convinced me to accept Kenny’s offer. Pete would, of course, join me, rather than sit in the nosebleed seat he usually occupies.
Laurie thought it would be fun, and chose to come with us. She is one of those life-half-full people. In fact, I think she’s the only one I’ve ever met that I don’t hate.
To show his gratitude, Pete made matters worse by inviting Laurie and me to join him and his buddies in their traditional tailgate ritual. Pete’s a lieutenant in the Paterson Police Department, and his buddies are all cops. Since I’m a defense attorney, I expect they would rather Pete had invited a Philadelphia Eagle.
Laurie, who occupies the dual role of love of my life and my private investigator, started her career in the Paterson Police Department, so she knows most of our fellow tailgaters. She spends at least five minutes hugging everybody there, with the notable exception of me.
It’s the second time in three weeks that I’ve spent time with this group of people. I attended a funeral service with Laurie for two young officers, Kyle Holmes and Carla Harvin, who were killed in the line of duty. They responded to a domestic-violence 911 call, and walked into a barrage of gunfire.
The officers are believed to have been lured there for the purpose of killing them, and the murders are seen as executions. The killers fled the scene, and no one has been arrested.
One of the reasons I agreed to do this today is that Pete has been particularly down since the tragedy, perhaps because Kyle was someone he had taken under his wing since his arrival from the police academy. It clearly brings home the danger, in a manner that is impossible for any denial mechanism to cope with, of just what it is that these people face every day.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I want Laurie to spend half the day hugging them, and it seems to take forever before she’s finished with the ritual, She then comes over, not to hug me, but to point to an adjacent van, also open at the back and apparently part of our party.
“Look, Andy, a television.”
There in the back of the van is a small TV, with rabbit ears for an antenna, and wavy lines where a clear picture is supposed to be. “Now that’s more like it,” I say. “Lucky we didn’t go to that sports bar with fifty flat-screen TVs; that could have set off my plasma allergy.”
“It’s possible you may not be fully into the spirit of this,” she says.
Pete comes over. “What’s the matter?” he asks. “You look miserable.”
“Apparently you can tell a book by its cover,” Laurie says.
“I am not miserable,” I protest. “Sitting at Charlie’s, drinking beer and eating one of those thick burgers with crisp french fries… that would be miserable. Plus, it’s so damn hot in there; it’s gotta be seventy degrees. And you can have that indoor plumbing; I’d rather stand on line to piss into a plastic hole any day of the week.”
Pete punches me lightly in the arm, then says. “Come on, man, this is part of the game.”
“Really? Who’s winning?”
I decide to give up and pretend to be enjoying myself, and before too long I actually am enjoying myself. It would be more fun if it weren’t so cold that I can’t feel my feet, but feet-feeling is overrated, and by the fourth beer I don’t care much either way.
About an hour before the actual game is to start, I tell Pete and Laurie that we have to head into the stadium; there’s a member of the Giants publicity department that is going to meet us and escort us down to the field.
Pete is only too anxious to get there, and as we depart he tells his friends, “If you losers are looking for me later, check out the fifty-yard line.”
We start walking toward the stadium, but stop when we hear, “Hey, Pete, look at this.”
It’s one of Pete’s fellow officers, pointing toward something on the TV in the back of the van. “Not now, man,” Pete says. “We got better things to do.”
But the officer is insistent, so we walk over. On the television is a press conference, with a breaking-news banner across the bottom.
“FBI: Arrest made in Hamilton Village arson murders.”
Pete stares at the screen, and I would know what was going through his mind even if I didn’t see the look on his face. I let him deal with it for a full minute, during which time he never takes his eyes off the screen, and doesn’t even seem to blink. Laurie knows what is happening as well, so she doesn’t say anything either.
Finally, “Come on, Pete,” I say. “We’re going to be late.”
“Go ahead without me,” he says. “Enjoy the game.”
The game is proving tough to enjoy.
There are a number of reasons for this, the first being that the temperature here on the sidelines makes the parking lot feel like Cancún. My hands are so cold that if I were Eli Manning I wouldn’t even be able to grip the football.
Which brings me to the second reason I’m miserable; Manning has thrown three interceptions and Kenny Schilling, our host, has fumbled twice, once inside the Eagle five-yard line. The Giants are losing 21-3.
They’re probably pleased that the game is only in the early third quarter. I’m not.
Laurie seems to be enjoying herself, so I don’t want to suggest we leave. I keep inching over toward the heaters behind the Giants bench, but the equipment manager is giving me dirty looks.
At least people in the stands can turn to alcohol to keep warm; on the field it’s prohibited. If I had some I’d drink it anyway; the worst that could happen is they’d throw me out or send me to a warm jail. Either result would be fine with me.
I instinctively feel that if I can keep my mind active, it will prevent it from freezing. So while the Eagles continue what will no doubt be another time-consuming touchdown drive, I think about Pete, and the news report we saw in the parking lot.
The Hamilton Village murders date back six years, and it was one of Pete’s first cases after achieving lieutenant status. It was a fire, quickly determined to be arson, in a small apartment building in a low- to middle-class Paterson neighborhood.